Art, music, and performance… Cork Midsummer Festival has it all 

For over two decades, Cork Midsummer Festival has been an important pillar of the city’s cultural calendar, a multi-disciplinary affair with an eye to Cork’s cultural life, including public arts engagement, site-specific theatre, and outreach to the local arts and cultural communities and scenes. This resolve was exemplified throughout the hardest days of the covid crisis - when the festival made every conceivable effort to reach people wherever they were, from online-streamed events, to performances from the city’s artists quite literally delivered to people’s doorsteps.

The festival’s post-covid mission statement has been to explore the contours of the city, and to help re-establish the public’s consciousness of arts in their backyard - the venues, the possibilities, and the new life that the city struggles to take on amid dereliction and the stagnation of the city centre.

On the phone this past Friday morning, Midsummer festival director Lorraine Maye is taking stock of a busy time.

“So far, we're so happy and excited about the response to the program. It's a very big, bright, fun year, there's a lot of mischief in the program this year. I think people have really picked up on that, and they're really getting in the spirit of the festival, and we can feel that, in terms of the feedback that we've had from audiences, from the artists, and also, we can see it through ticket sales as well - we're having a great year, so far, lots of people booking, and they're back to where they were, or ahead of, the pre pandemic years, so that's fantastic.”

Performances take place in an array of spaces, from hallowed halls like the Opera House, hosting actor Siobhán McSweeney’s reprise of Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days, and a Cork City Hall about to be filled with an indoor beach; to seldom-staged spots like the Crawford Art Gallery, playing host to work from Gina Moxley and Orla Barry, and more casual venues like the Franciscan Well, taking part in composer Ellen King’s Music Trail, and the Marina Market - while the city streets themselves will be riots of colour and performance, including the now-annual Midsummer Parade, and the complete consumption of Shandon Street in multi-colour foam.

Maye is enthusiastic about how the Midsummer mission, and the further exploration of the festival’s post-crisis possibilities, is progressing.

“In terms of the approach this year, every year has its own tone, and feeling, that comes together through conversations with artists, things that are in the air. So this festival is all about brand new work, mostly work that's contemporary, the international work is very new. I think that last year, there was a real sense that people were still in a kind of a reflective mood, y'know, on the pandemic, on some of the issues that came up; also a bit reluctant to maybe, you know, to go back into theatres, to go back to big gatherings. Whereas this year, it's very much feels like people are ready to go out, they're ready to celebrate, they're ready to have a completely different kind of experience to what they were doing in their homes the last few year.

“They really want to have exhilarating arts experiences. With that in the air, that's very much something that guided the program this year, that sense that people wanted to celebrate, that they wanted excitement, and that they wanted to gather.”

One of the major experiences of this year’s edition will be the five-show run of Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days at the Opera House - directed by the Abbey Theatre’s artistic director Caitríona McLaughlin in a Landmark production, and starring Cork actor Siobhán McSweeney as heroine Winne, buried waist deep in the sands of ennui and greeting each day with seemingly boundless optimism.

Having previously been livestreamed from the Olympia Theatre in Dublin over the course of the pandemic, this run at the Opera House marks its debut in front of a live audience - for which McLaughlin is excited, in pre-rehearsal conversation.

“It's a very different thing, making something for a camera, and making something for live audiences. Because of the fact that I'm at the Abbey now, we haven't had a normal rehearsal process [this time]. We've just had a couple of days rehearsal, so Siobhán is trying to remember a lot of what we did a couple of years ago. That's quite different to how things normally work, but fair play to her, she's going for it, she's doing a great job.

“And it's exciting to get in front of an audience, frankly. Theatre needs to be in a live environment, it needs to be in front of a live audience, and it's never the same. And you kind-of think, with something like Happy Days, you know what she's fixed in a mound up to a waist, and then up to her throat, and you think, what difference does it make, y'know, you could get in closer with the camera, but it's not really about getting close.

“It's about that dynamic, and the audience understanding that from being there together. So yeah, I'm delighted to see it happen in the live space now.”

The festival’s current edition continues a long history of working with the city’s communities, partnering with tandem with groups like Cork Community Artlink; outlets like local drag family Haus of Mockie Ah; and artists from marginalised communities, as seen in To Be What We Are, an installation made by young Traveller creators to hold space for play.

Maye discusses how the social-engagement aspect of the festival has taken shape.

“It's something we've been developing a lot over the last number of years, and we made a big commitment to it a few years ago, when we created a part-time position of Head of Participation and Engagement, we now have a full-time lead on that programme, Susan Collins, and these projects we're working on year round. Some of them take years of planning - for example, with the young Traveller cohort, children and families, we would have started talking to them back in 2018, through another project that we did up in Knocknaheeny.

“It's at the heart of the festival, I would say really. Often the most magical, moving, entertaining projects in the festival are the ones that are created by communities, always alongside amazing artists as well. We want to create a sense of belonging for people in the city, that they own the festival, that they belong to it.

“[Then there's] our work with artists who are based in Cork, or from Cork. We organize a lot of residencies. So we have an artist in residence, ELLL, Ellen King, who's curated a really brilliant music trail, really exciting. We also have our work in terms of platforming and supporting emerging practice - [drag queen] Candy Warhol, with her show, The Wind That Shakes the Wig, she is moving into a really exciting, innovative theatre, drag space - that’s what we’re showcasing throughout the festival.”

Cork Community Artlink’s project manager Casey Walsh is helping oversee the general effort on the Blackpool facility’s second annual Midsummer Parade, taking in a lap of the city from Oliver Plunkett, to a 60-minute finale on Grand Parade. Artlink’s work in the community goes back three decades as of this year - and for Walsh and crew, the Parade is an opportunity to explore themes, and work with a wide variety of other community groups.

“A lot of our parade, the ideas and themes around them come from the community groups we work with. We like not to put any kind of limitations on them - we kind of get their ideas of what they want to do, so they're a huge part in coming up with what the actual theme of the parade is going to be.

“The idea of the parade this year is celebrating [our 30th anniversary], so it's led by the Blackpool Express, which is kind of a representation of our journey, of arts facilitation in Cork, and along with that comes this idea of all these people's stories, along that journey, on that train. We're also tapping into this idea of the greatest traveling show throughout time - we have our weird and wonderful contraptions, which will be our floats, and we have all of our performers.

“It's a bit of a mishmash, because it really is the people in the parade that make the parade.”

With the theme of working with the city and its people in mind, as Midsummer always has, and with society beginning to move on from the last few years - as a curator, facilitator, and festival head - what are the upsides and challenges of continuing to do things on a scale like this in Cork, from logistical, cultural, and infrastructural perspectives?

“In terms of trying to do the work that we do, so much of what we do in the festival is site-specific, site-responsive, unusual and unexpected places. And Cork City Council are really brilliant at facilitating this for us.

“For example, with Sun & Sea, a really big ambitious, international, award-winning, world-class piece of work, that we wouldn't be able to bring to Cork if it wasn't for the support of the City Council. Y'know, they've opened the doors at City Hall, there's a lot of people involved there behind the scenes, that will be helping us out with this. That's a real positive, a legacy from Corcadorca Theatre, I think, in terms of Cork people, businesses, places, willing to open their doors to have amazing and unusual events happen.

“In terms of the challenges, I mean, they're the same across the board - things are expensive, the cost of living, people have to make choices. We have to work as hard as we can, ourselves and the artists, to make sure that when they're choosing your festival, that they're getting everything that they hope for when they attend a festival event.”

On what makes the festival special, McLaughlin chimes in: “To be honest, I think the festival is brilliant. I come every year, because it has unique work. I love to see Cork artists and Munster artists, because a lot of them, you see here, that you don't see at the other festivals, in other parts of the country. So I always find it a really unique and original festival, you'll always find something a little bit out-there, or avant-garde.

“People tend to take risks here, which I think is the most important thing for theatre to survive, is that they're given space and support to take chances. I feel like that's something that Cork does brilliantly, and that the Midsummer festival does brilliantly. It supports those stranger, out-there, bigger, riskier choices. It's not confined to conventional theatre - the odder, quirkier bits and pieces that I love to come to Cork to see.”

Cork Midsummer Festival continues until Sunday June 25 at venues around Cork city. For more information and tickets, head for corkmidsummer.com.